A DEMATEL based approach for investigating barriers in green supply chain management in Canadian manufacturing firms

Green supply chain management (GSCM) involves consideration of environmental impacts of all the processes involved in a typical supply chain to minimise their negative consequences. In this paper, we present a DEMATEL-based approach for investigating barriers in GSCM in Canadian context. Seven manufacturing firms from electronic goods sector are involved. The results of our study yield three main categories of barriers. These barriers are knowledge-related (lack of awareness of the environmental impacts on business, lack of training courses/consultancy/institutions to train, monitor/mentor progress specific to each industry, lack of technical expertise and difficulty in identifying environmental opportunities), commitment-related (lack of corporate social responsibility) and product design-related (complexity of design to reuse/recycle used products). The proposed study is one of the first few to be conducted in the Canadian context for green supply chain barrier analysis for electronic goods sector. Secondly, the barriers are investigated through causality and prominence relations which can help decision-makers, policy planners and managers of organisations in addressing those critical few for making green supply chain practices a success.